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I N B R I E F
January/February 2017
Table of Contents
Digital Library Federation Shares New DLF Organizers' Toolkit
Contributed by
Katherine Kim
Digital Library Federation
info [at] diglib.org
The Digital Library Federation shares a new DLF Organizers' Toolkit to support inclusive, equitable, and highly effective communities of practice. A collaborative document borne from the efforts of past and present community organizers as well as DLF staff, this evolving toolkit addresses challenges from goal setting to preventing burnout to facilitating for diversity and inclusion. The toolkit was released after the 2016 DLF Forum, following DLF director Bethany Nowviskie's open invitation to harness the Federation as "a framework for what you need, for what you want to create — or [use to] resist."
Just as DLF working and interest groups are open to people both within and beyond our institutional membership, we welcome contributions by all and hope that you find this resource helpful. We enthusiastically encourage you to use, revise, and share the DLF Organizers' Toolkit:
It is meant to improve our documentation of evolving community norms, contribute to best practice and institutional memory, and provide tips and resources to those who want to use the DLF to advance the field. This is your Toolkit for starting new initiatives or working groups, facilitating ongoing projects or connecting existing ones, and using the DLF as a platform to lift up anything from small conversations to sweeping movements.
Please feel free add content directly to the toolkit or contact Team DLF with your questions, suggestions, and ideas at info [at] diglib.org.
UCI Libraries Completes NEH-funded Project:
Piloting Linked Open Data for Artists' Books
Contributed by
Shu Liu
University of California, Irvine (UCI) Libraries
Irvine, California, USA
libdss [at] uci.edu
The University of California, Irvine (UCI) Libraries completed a National Endowment of the Humanities (NEH) funded project to create an innovative online discovery tool for its Artists' Books Collection. This tool allows searchers to visualize connections between works in ways not possible with a traditional library catalog.
Traditional library cataloging practices do not adequately describe artistic objects. Online public access catalogs limit browsing of collections to author, title, subject, and keyword. These limitations cause issues of user discovery on the Web. Local art scholars wanted to explore the Artists' Books Collection using materials and techniques, and they wanted to see the relationships between similar UCI Libraries' holdings. UCI Libraries transformed traditional cataloging records into Linked Open Data (LOD) to address the descriptive shortcomings during this one-year incubator project. The LOD exposed the genre, technique, and material information from the catalog record into machine actionable concepts that could be integrated into a prototype visual browsing interface.
The Artists' Books Discovery Tool features a graphical interface showing connections between materials used, techniques applied, and publication locations of digital objects, while providing multiple digital views of each piece of unique sculptural art from the collection. A series of resources and tools were explored and tested to enrich the initial metadata and develop the LOD-based Discovery Tool. Workflows were documented so that they can potentially be implemented at a larger scale and by other institutions. Major project outputs beyond the Discovery Tool include high-quality surrogates created using digital photography, the set of LOD, and the Discovery Tool program code.
Staff with various expertise in the Libraries worked closely at all stages of the project. "The project sparked faculty interest in integrating the collections with curricula," said Laura Smart, project lead and Head of Digital Scholarship Services. Visual arts librarian Emilee Mathews says she anticipates working with arts faculty to encourage students to use the tool as part of their course work. "An important part of the project was to create a framework that can be adopted by others," said John Renaud, project principal investigator and Associate University Librarian for Research Resources. "This project will continue to bring benefits to the Libraries, partners across UCI and the UC system, and academic and cultural heritage institutions worldwide."
By displaying our vision and sharing outcome yielded from this pilot, UCI Libraries believe that engaging and fostering new developments in resource description has the potential to change humanities scholarship.
Project documentation and code are openly available at the project web site. Visit http://www.lib.uci.edu/artists-books for further information.
This project was made possible by a major grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this article do not necessarily represent those of the NEH.
New Open Dataset Released by HathiTrust
Contributed by
HTRC Staff
HathiTrust
Champaign, Illinois, USA
htrc-help [at] hathitrust.org
A new open dataset released by the HathiTrust Research Center (HTRC) will provide researchers with access to otherwise restricted information. The HTRC Extracted Features (EF) Dataset, unique in its sheer size and breadth, reports quantitative counts of words, lines, parts of speech, and other details extracted from each page of the more than thirteen million volumes found in the HathiTrust, compromised of nearly 5 billion pages and over 2 trillion tokens (words), allowing non-consumptive research on the full HTDL corpus.
An earlier release of the EF Dataset, drawn from a subset covering only the five million volumes in HathiTrust's public domain collection, has enabled novel research from scholars in economics, history, linguistics, literary studies, and sociology, among other fields. The new EF dataset, provides access to features drawn from the remaining eight million volumes that otherwise would be unavailable to scholars because of copyright restrictions.
The dataset enables study of materials that are under copyright in HathiTrust — a portion of the corpus making up more than 61% of the entire collection — for the first time. Enabling research access to these volumes has substantial impact on many branches of study, and allows new lines of inquiry impossible prior to this release.
"Right now, many arguments about literary history come to a stop in 1923. Most works after that date are still covered by copyright in the U.S., so it has been very difficult to organize digital collections that would allow us to survey a broad, representative sample of writing. We know there's a big literary landscape out there, but we can only map it with a flashlight, looking at one book at a time," explained Professor Ted Underwood, one of the dataset's developers and Professor in English and Information Sciences at the University of Illinois. "The extracted features released by HathiTrust Research Center are like turning on the moonlight. For the first time, literary historians will get to survey the whole landscape at once."
"The HTRC EF Dataset creates opportunities for scholarship and teaching that were previously impossible," said J. Stephen Downie, co-director of HTRC, and Professor and Associate Dean for Research at the School of Information Sciences at University of Illinois. "We look forward to learning how the scholarly community incorporates them into research, labs, and classrooms."
For information about the EF Dataset, description of its contents and instructions for download, visit the HTRC Datasets page. For questions, comments or help with the dataset, contact HTRC at htrc-help [at] hathitrust.org.
HTRC is a partnership between Indiana University, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and the HathiTrust. Established in 2011, HTRC develops cutting-edge software tools and cyberinfrastructure to enable advanced computational access to the growing digital record of human knowledge.
Design for Diversity: An IMLS National Forum at Northeastern University
Contributed by
Julia Flanders
Northeastern University
flanders [at] northeastern.edu
The acquisition, housing, and care of cultural objects has always been closely implicated in structures of cultural power. But in recent years, the professional communities of the libraries, archives and museum world have moved increasingly to acknowledge the need for genuine, responsive partnership with the communities in which these objects originate. In the domain of digital information systems, key research questions have emerged concerning the hegemonic role of knowledge representation and information standards, and the role of algorithms, interfaces, and tool design in reinforcing power differentials inherent in the status quo.
The Digital Scholarship Group (DSG) in the Northeastern University Library has received funding from the Institute of Museum and Library Services for a national forum to explore these issues and to design a teaching and learning toolkit to support professional development for members of the LAM community. The forum events will bring together librarians, archivists, and curators, as well as community members, oral historians, digital humanities practitioners, programmers and metadata experts: a broad cross-section of those with a vested interest in the ethical creation and support of digital archives involving disenfranchised or underrepresented communities. We will discuss questions like the following: what are the responsibilities of the researcher, the designer, the curator, or the archivist in creating new open digital collections ready for automated harvesting, software-assisted analysis, and broad re-use and reinterpretation? How do knowledge representation, naming, and power influence not only interactions with disenfranchised communities, but also the design of tools and interfaces? When tools and interfaces limit or constrain interactions with documents and items, are they responsive to community needs or do they truncate ways of knowing? What commonalities and diversities exist within and across communities of users?
The planning and advisory group for this project includes scholars with varying kinds of expertise at Northeastern and elsewhere. We are very honored to have participation from Ellen Cushman, Giordana Mecagni, Moya Bailey, Marty Blatt, Élika Ortega, Kelcey Shepard, Wendy Chun, Angel Nieves, Kim Withey, and Trevor Muñoz. As the project develops we will be drawing in additional members to broaden the group's base of experience and expertise.
The first public forum event will be held in fall 2017. Following the forum discussion, the project's design team will work through the winter and spring to draft a teaching and learning toolkit that frames and explores the issues addressed by the forum. A final public forum event will be held in late summer 2018 in which the draft toolkit will be shared and discussed. The final version of the toolkit will incorporate the feedback received at this session. Funding for this project includes travel subventions to ensure broad participation, and all materials will be shared publicly from the DSG site. For more information, please visit http://dsg.neu.edu/research/design-for-diversity/, email us at DesignForDiversity [at] northeastern.edu, or follow us on Twitter at [at] NU_DSG.
This project was made possible in part by the Institute of Museum and Library Services. The views, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this article do not necessarily represent those of the Institute of Museum and Library Services.
Introducing Humanities Commons
Contributed by
Nicky Agate
Head of Digital Initiatives
Modern Language Association
hello [at] hcommons.org
Imagine a humanities network with the sharing power of Academia.edu, the archival quality of an institutional repository, and a commitment to using and contributing to open source software. Now imagine that this network is not-for-profit. It doesn't want to sell your data or generate profit from your intellectual property. That's Humanities Commons. Humanities Commons wants to help you expand the reach of your scholarship, create an online presence, find others who share your interests. It wants to provide a home for open access research and educational resources and be the hub for interdisciplinary collaboration and advocacy.
Humanities Commons launched in public beta in December 2016. It was designed by scholarly societies in the humanities to serve the needs of their members and others as they engage in teaching, research, and advocacy that benefit the larger community. Members of Humanities Commons can create profiles; build networked WordPress sites for class, group, or personal use; and engage in discussions in private and public groups (and share any work they upload to the repository with those groups).
CORE, the Humanities Commons repository, is focused on providing a space to share and store humanities research, projects, and pedagogical materials. Developed in partnership with Columbia University's Center for Digital Research and Scholarship, CORE is underwritten by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities' Office of Digital Humanities.
The near future of Humanities Commons and CORE sees the development of an open-source WordPress/BuddyPress theme, the creation of discussion areas and improved metrics for items shared in the repository, alerts and notifications tailored to member interests, integration with InCommon and ORCiD, a move to the Fedora 4 platform, and a thorough investigation into interoperability with institutional repositories.
Humanities Commons is based on the open-source Commons-in-a-Box project of the City University of New York and the CUNY Graduate Center and is an expansion of the MLA's MLA Commons, which launched in January 2013. The founding partner societies of Humanities Commons are the Association for Jewish Studies; the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies; and the College Art Association. Each society has its own Commons spoke for its members, tied to Humanities Commons, the central hub that's open to anyone working in the humanities.
Humanities Commons is a project of the office of scholarly communication at the Modern Language Association. Its development is generously funded by a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Sign up at hcommons.org.
I N T H E N E W S
George Mason University Partners with Wiley for Online Graduate Programs
January 10, 2017 — "John Wiley and Sons, Inc. [and] George Mason University have entered into a 10-year agreement that will expand the scope of George Mason's online graduate programs and strengthen the university's commitment to providing transformative educational opportunities for working adults and non-traditional students."
"Mason's partnership with Wiley, a global provider of knowledge and learning services, is critical to the university's efforts to answer a growing demand for online educational options. The partnership will allow Mason, Virginia's largest public research university, to reach more students who want to advance their education but may not have the ability to spend time in a physical classroom...."
"...The partnership allows Mason to focus on its education mission and delivery of high quality programs while leveraging the expertise and resources of Wiley. Under the agreement, Mason will provide the programs, courses, faculty and academic support. Wiley will provide market research, marketing, student enrollment and retention services, and technological support...."
"...The initial master's programs offered by Mason through the partnership will be in business, health systems management, health informatics and special education with certificates in applied behavioral analysis and autism. Programs will be available beginning January 2018 and will expand as additional programs that align the needs of students and employers are brought online."
For more information, please see the full press release.
CLIR Invites Applications for Digitizing At-Risk Audio Materials
Pilot phase of new Recordings at Risk grant program focuses on preservation reformatting
of magnetic audio media
January 4, 2017 — "The Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) is now accepting applications from collecting institutions for the digital reformatting of magnetic audio materials, as part of the pilot phase of the Recordings at Risk grant program. Generously funded by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Recordings at Risk is focused on digitally reformatting 'at-risk' audio and audiovisual materials of high scholarly value."
"In this pilot cycle, CLIR will award approximately $150,000 for the preservation reformatting of magnetic audio media through the Northeast Document Conservation Center's (NEDCC's) newly established audio preservation service. Grants of between $5,000 and $25,000 will be awarded for projects of up to 12 months, to fall between May 2017 and April 2018."
"The application deadline for the pilot project is March 3, 2017. Awards will be announced April 30, 2017."
For more information, please see the full press release.
Call for participation in UX Working Group, part of DLF Assessment Interest Group
January 3, 2017, announcement from Kate Thornhill, Oregon Health & Science University — "This message is an invitation to participate in the Digital Library Federation Assessment Interest Group's (DLF AIG) User Experience Working Group in 2017. There is more information about the User Experience (UX) Working Group..."
"The only requirement for participation in a DLF AIG working group is a willingness to dig in and devote a small part of your time contributing to the tools, methods, and body of knowledge on digital library assessment. Attendance at the DLF forum is not a requirement for participation in any of the working groups. Additionally, if your institution is not a DLF member, you can still
participate."
"...[The] UX Working Group [https://wiki.diglib.org/Assessment:User/UX] is a subset of the User Studies AIG [https://wiki.diglib.org/Assessment:User_Studies] and previous named Usability Studies Guidelines and Best Practices Working Group. Our group takes a multi-faceted approach to determining the best way to develop guidelines and best practices in user and usability studies related to digital libraries."
"For questions about the DLF AIG UX Working Group, contact Kate Thornhill at thornhik [at] ohsu.edu."
LAUSD and Los Angeles Public Library Launch Library Card Partnership
December 26, 2016 — "Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti joined the Los Angeles Public Library and Los Angeles Unified School District to launch the historic Student Success Card program. For the first time, the Los Angeles Public Library is partnering with L.A. Unified to issue a Student Success library card to every student. Bringing together the nation's second-largest school district and the library system that serves the largest, most diverse urban population in the nation, the Student Success card provides unprecedented access to live online homework help and the library's vast digital resources to support students' educational endeavors while preparing them for college."
"The special Student Success library card will allow L.A. Unified students to check out up to three books and access all online resources – without incurring fines or fees. The first batch of close to 58,000 cards was mailed to all kindergarten students throughout LAUSD and to all students at three pilot schools – Virginia Road Elementary, Audubon Middle, and Dorsey High Schools. The program will get a Student Success card into the hands of approximately 655,000 L.A. Unified students in the next two years."
For more information, please see the full press release.
OIF revamps reporting tools for library hate crime and material challenges
December 20, 2017 — "The Office for Intellectual Freedom (OIF) – the voice of the First Amendment in libraries – introduced upgraded tools that make censorship easier to report and easier to track. On Dec. 20, the office rolled out a simpler form to document censorship and hate crime, a web page exclusively for challenge support and an internal database."
"OIF has documented censorship cases in the literary community since 1990. Last year, the office recorded 275 challenges – requests to remove materials from libraries, schools and bookshops – but surveys indicate that up to 85 percent of book challenges remain unreported. To encourage educators to report censorship, OIF remodeled its intake process."
"The new form simplifies the reporting process by reducing the number of questions by more than 60 percent. Educators can now upload documents and receive an emailed copy of their report. The report not only allows OIF to gather challenge statistics, but also to reach out to educators and provide emotional support, media training and case procedure advice. All records remain confidential unless the user chooses otherwise."
"The redesigned form includes a hate crime category. Since November, seven library hate crimes have been documented by OIF. Hate crimes in libraries include vandalism, harassment and assault that targets specific groups."
For more information, please see the full press release.
CLIR and Axiell Partner to Create the Digital Library of the Middle East
Collaboration based on a mutual vision for preserving cultural heritage, enhancing research,
and creating teaching and learning environments
December 19, 2016 — "The Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) today announced its partnership with Axiell, a leading vendor globally of collections management software to archives, libraries, and museums. Together, the two organizations will explore collaborative opportunities to design and sustain the Digital Library of the Middle East (DLME)...."
"...As presently conceived, the DLME will combine digital inventories with high-resolution digital replicas of cultural artifacts originating from the Middle East, including artifacts managed by cultural organizations in the region as well as digitized items relevant to Middle Eastern cultural heritage maintained around the world. In addition, large-scale digitization and cataloging of museum, library, and archival physical objects – as well as artifacts from archeological sites – will be supported throughout the Middle East to enrich the scope of cultural materials online. Images and descriptions from the DLME will be made publicly available, to the extent permitted by copyright, to encourage greater understanding of the region's cultural legacy."
"The project aims to be sustainable and to provide a cultural commonwealth, while helping safeguard a fundamentally important expression of our humanity. Making the inventory available and creating a teaching resource would further open it up for advanced research in the region. Through its high-resolution images and detailed descriptions of ownership and legal status, this multimedia digital library will be designed to trace the provenance and track the movement of historically significant items as a means to inhibit looting and illicit trafficking."
For more information, please see the full press release.
Librarian of Congress Seeks Input on Register of Copyrights
December 16, 2016 — "The public will have the opportunity to provide input to the Library of Congress on expertise needed by the Register of Copyrights, the Librarian of Congress, Carla Hayden, announced today."
"Beginning today, December 16, an online survey is open to the public. The survey will be posted through Jan. 31, 2017."
"Link to survey: https://www.research.net/r/RegisterOfCopyrights
Deadline for submitting comments: Jan. 31, 2017"
"Input will be reviewed and will inform development of knowledge, skills and abilities requirements for the position."
For more information, please see the full press release.
Facing a divided nation, ALA offers libraries free trainings in dialogue facilitation and deliberation
December 15, 2016 — "The American Library Association (ALA) Public Programs Office and the National Coalition for Dialogue & Deliberation (NCDD) invite library professionals to attend a free learning series to explore various dialogue facilitation approaches and position themselves to foster conversation and lead change in their communities."
"'As our nation becomes increasingly divided, ALA sees tremendous opportunity for libraries to be a leading force for reconciliation, progress and common ground,' said ALA President Julie Todaro. 'We are proud to make community engagement resources available to all libraries, free of charge, through this initiative.'"
"Through Libraries Transforming Communities: Models for Change, a two-year project, ALA and NCDD will produce ten webinars and three in-person workshops. Change-making leaders, such as Everyday Democracy, National Issues Forum and World Café, will develop and lead the trainings, which will be customized to meet the needs of various library types and sizes: large public library systems; small, medium-sized and rural public libraries; and academic libraries."
For more information, please see the full press release.
Libraries retain more than $1.3 billion in federal funding in massive spending bill passed by Congress
December 15, 2016 — "Libraries retained over a billion dollars in federal funding for library-related programs in a stopgap funding package passed by Congress on December 9 to avoid a midnight shutdown of the federal government. The continuing resolution that cleared Friday by the Senate following Thursday's House approval will allow spending by all arms of the federal government to continue at or near FY2016 levels through April 28, 2017. The President signed the resolution Saturday."
"'American libraries and librarians transform communities, but we wouldn't have the reach we do without support from the federal government,' said ALA President Julie Todaro. 'Federal dollars allow many libraries to offer unique programs tailored to their communities and their constituents, particularly in underserved areas. This critical federal support for key library grant programs is made possible thanks to our champions in Congress and the advocacy of thousands of librarians and library supporters who write, call and visit their members of Congress at home and during National Library Legislative Day.'"
For more information, please see the full press release.
Effort Underway To Improve Digital Inclusion and Literacy for Tribal and Rural Residents
December 12, 2016 — "The Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) and the PAST Foundation's National Digital Inclusion Alliance (NDIA-PAST), announced a pilot project that aims to increase digital inclusion in the United States through local digital literacy trainers, called the Digital Inclusion Corps. The pilot project will work with three state library agencies and two museum organizations to deploy Corps members in five tribal and rural communities."
"The five Corps members will work with local communities to discover their community digital inclusion-related needs.They will then create a digital equity plan to address such issues as affordable home internet access, public access, low-cost devices and digital literacy training and technology support. With support from a the project manager, the Corps members will implement the plans, share their experiences online and gather and annotate a collection of digital literacy materials for a publicly available repository at the U.S. Impact Research Group at the University of Washington. Evaluation data will be collected throughout the project period."
"The pilot is part of a broader effort between IMLS and NDIA-PAST to create more equitable access to online information as well literacy support and training for all residents and communities, particularly those most disadvantaged."
For more information, please see the full press release.
National Museum and Library Services Board Gains Five New and One Returning Member
December 7, 2017 — "Six individuals, who were appointed by President Barack Obama in late November, were sworn in as members of the National Museum and Library Services Board yesterday. They will join other board members for today's biannual board meeting at the office of the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) in Washington, DC."
"The board is the advisory body for IMLS, and members are selected to serve based on their expertise and commitment to libraries or museums."
"The newly sworn in board members are the following:
- Sayeed Choudhury, Associate Dean for Research Data Management and the Hodson Director of the Digital Research and Curation Center at the Sheridan Libraries of Johns Hopkins University, positions held since 2011 and 1997 respectively.
- Luis Herrera, City Librarian for the San Francisco Public Library.
- Homa Naficy, Chief Adult Learning Officer at Hartford Public Library.
- Dr. Tey Marianna Nunn, Director and Chief Curator of the Art Museum and Visual Arts Program at the National Hispanic Cultural Center.
- Jane Pickering, Executive Director of the Harvard Museums of Science and Culture.
- Beth Takekawa, Executive Director of the Wing Luke Museum of the Asian Pacific American Experience (The Wing)."
"The newly appointed board members replace Bert Castro, John Coppola, Winston Tabb, Carla Hayden and Susana Torruella Leval, whose terms have expired. Luis Herrera's appointment was renewed."
For more information, including additional information about the new members of the board, please see the full press release.
Wiley's Author Services Launch – First Step in Providing Dynamic Authoring Experience
December 5, 2017 — "John Wiley & Sons Inc. announced today the launch of a new Author Services website that streamlines the publishing process for authors publishing with the majority of Wiley's 1600+ journals. Author Services supports users through every stage of the publishing process, from submission and peer review through to acceptance and publication. This launch is one of the first steps in Wiley's continuing commitment toward a seamless end-to-end web-first publishing experience."
"The new Author Services site was born from customer needs and extensive user testing, in an effort to simplify processes and take users through in one step, rather than multiple. Researchers will benefit from a more intuitive user experience, and cleaner interface. New and improved features include: Author Dashboard for detailed article tracking; open access payments; Author Licensing Service, providing fast, online license signing; article citation metrics; and an Author Resource Center."
"Author Services provides not only Wiley's authors with a world-class publishing experience, but also links society partners, editors and peer reviewers with extensive resources. Editors and Reviewers now have dedicated Resource Centers with training tools and other easy-to-access content."
For more information, please see the full press release.
Big (and Open) Data for Scholarship of All Sizes: A New Release of the HathiTrust Research Center Extracted Features Dataset
December 5, 2016 — "HathiTrust today announces the release of a significantly expanded open dataset, the HathiTrust Research Center (HTRC) Extracted Features (EF) Dataset, Version 1.0. This dataset provides researchers with open access to data extracted from the full text of the HathiTrust Digital Library (HTDL) at an unprecedented scale."
"The Extracted Features Dataset opens the complete HathiTrust collection for investigations into historical and cultural trends, the rise and fall of topics within the corpus, and the evolution of words and writing structures in publications dating from the 16th to the late 20th century. The EF Dataset provides quantitative information about word and line counts, parts of speech, and other details within each page of every volume in the HTDL. In addition to these larger-scale investigations, the EF Dataset also allows researchers to closely analyze the contents of a given volume or subset of volumes."
"The data is extracted from 13.7 million volumes found in the HTDL, representing over 5 billion pages consisting of over 2 trillion tokens (words). A preliminary release of the EF Dataset, drawn from a much smaller subset comprising only HathiTrust's public domain collection, has already enabled novel research from scholars in economics, history, linguistics, literary studies and sociology, among other fields."
For more information, please see the full press release.
Digital Preservation Awards 2016 – Winners Announced
December 1, 2016 announcement from Sarah Middleton, Head of Communications and Advocacy,
Digital Preservation Coalition — "Leading organisations and practitioners in Digital Preservation came together on 30th November at the Wellcome Collection in London, for an evening of celebration at the exciting Digital Preservation Awards 2016."
"...Hosted by the Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC) and introduced by the Chair of Judges, Adrian Brown of the Parliamentary Archives, the evening celebrated the achievements of those people and organisations who have made significant and innovative contributions to maintaining a digital legacy."
"In a year which saw the greatest number and quality of nominations received to date, those selected as finalists faced tough competition from entries across Asia, Europe, North America, Australasia and the Middle East making this the most international competition so far."
For more information, please see the full announcement at http://www.dpconline.org/advocacy/awards/2016-digital-preservation-awards.
Alfred P. Sloan Foundation awards grant for arXiv upgrade
November 29, 2016 — "arXiv.org, the influential open access repository for global scientific research, will begin the first phrase of a three-year overhaul and modernization with the help of a $445,000 grant by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation."
"The Sloan Foundation grant will fund the creation of a detailed blueprint for next-generation arXiv – to be known as arXiv-NG – allowing planners to establish new partnerships, identify necessary resources and build a core development team to lead the modernization process...."
"...arXiv-NG is being supported through the Sloan Foundation's Scholarly Communication program, which makes grants aimed at empowering research by supporting the development of technologies and practices that allow scientists to communicate more effectively as a community. "
For more information, please see the full press release.
The IET launches new open access program, IET Open
November 23, 2016 — "The Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) today announced the launch of a new open access program, IET Open. The creation of the program underpins the IET's commitment to supporting open science across engineering disciplines to progress research across all areas. IET Open launches with two new journals: IET Cyber-Physical Systems: Theory and Applications and Engineering Biology. The IET's other open access journals - High Voltage, published in partnership with CEPRI, The Journal of Engineering and Healthcare Technology Letters, will also publish under the program."
"Vincent Cassidy, IET Head of Academic Markets, said, 'The IET has closely monitored the growth of open access within engineering science. Like other publishers, we responded to this growth by offering gold open access options in our subscription journals and launched a gold open access interdisciplinary journal, The Journal of Engineering. Our own knowledge of emerging areas in engineering science combined with market evidence meant that this was the perfect time to launch a dedicated open access program that will showcase the best in exciting and innovative research.'"
For more information, please see the full press release.
NISO Announces New Publishers Enacting Phase Two of KBART Guidelines, Encourages Other Publishers to Seek Endorsement
November 21, 2017 — "The National Information Standards Organization (NISO) is pleased to announce that five publishers are now supplying metadata that conforms to phase two of the recommended practice, KBART: Knowledge Bases And Related Tools (NISO RP-9-2014). Conformance with KBART indicates that the format and content of data supplied by these publishers observe practical recommendations for timely exchange between content providers and knowledge base vendors."
"The newest endorsers are:
- Greenleaf Publishing
- Harvard University Press
- IEEE
- Oxford University Press
- Project MUSE"
For more information, please see the full press release.
Emerald re-envisions its Library & Information Science journals
November 15, 2016 — "Emerald Group Publishing - the publisher that nurtures fresh thinking to deliver real research impact - has changed the names, broadened the scope and appointed new editors to some of its key Library & Information Science journals."
"Eileen Breen, Publisher at Emerald, said: 'Library Science is becoming more interdisciplinary and outward-looking. Working at the interface with Information Systems research - as well as Information Science and Educational research - is broadening the impact of the field.'"
"'Emerald is therefore adapting to these trends by broadening the scope of several of its titles, making name changes and appointing new editors.'"
For more information, please see the full press release.
IMLS Releases Guidelines for the National Leadership Grants for Libraries and the Laura Bush 21st Century Librarian Programs
November 9, 2016 — "Today the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) released application guidelines for the second cycle of the 2017 National Leadership Grants for Libraries (NLG) and the Laura Bush 21st Century Librarian Program (LB21). This is the second and final opportunity to apply for the 2017 NLG and LB21 programs. The National Leadership Grants program invests in projects that address challenges faced by the library and archive fields and generate results such as new tools, research findings, or models that can be widely used. The Laura Bush 21st Century Librarian Program supports human capital capacity projects for libraries and archives."
"Applicants have through February 1, 2017, to submit their two-page preliminary proposals."
"From the preliminary proposals submitted by the February 1 deadline, IMLS will select applicants and invite them to submit full proposals by June 9, 2017. Applicants who were not invited to continue from an earlier cycle of funding are welcome to submit new preliminary proposals by February 1."
For more information, please see the full press release.
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